July 10, 2009

Each objection to a Public Health Insurance Option, aka Public Plan, is important to consider, and with some thought, each objection can be completely addressed and solved in a good way.

It just takes application of knowledge and a certain kind of logical thinking. But good solutions for all problems arising around a Public Plan exist.

In my main post on Health Care, including updates, we've now addressed:

Fixing the Cost-Spiral

Drug Costs

Freedom of Choice of Doctors/Treatments

Non-interference between Patients and their Doctors

Freedom for Innovation

Complex Conditions

Complex Diagnoses

Complex Outcomes

Setting Prices in a Public Plan

The last main part, which I've worked on today, is how a Public Plan can set treatment prices in a rational market-fashion, leaving complete freedom of choice for patients and providers, and without an unfair advantage over private insurers (who themselves could use a similar system or even use the public plan prices). See "Update 7-10" in the post.

2 comments:

I just watched Bill Moyers Journal tonight. He lost me as a viewer.After I watched the program on health care, I wanted to post a linkto a single payer petition and his administrators refused my postbut allowed a lot of other people's posts. Apparently Moyers doesn'tlike a call to action on single payer. He appears like a fake liberal to me. I will not watch his program for awhile after this affront andlack of free noncommercial speech. I wanted to post this call to actionlisted below. IF you agree with me that he has censored then complain to him at pbs.org on his blog.

The Liberal Democratic Party of the United States functions as a progressive legislative political party.

We do not run candidates for office. We usually support candidates of the Democratic party of the United States.

We do not handle money and we do not charge money for membership and we do not raise money.

So you can join our party and still remain a a member of the Democratic, Green, Labor, or other progressive party you belong to.

Instead we create referenda on legislation by boycott petitions where we target the companies which sell consumer products and associate themselves with conservatives. We demand that these company CEOs get the legislation that we want and until that happens our members send letters to these companies indicating we will boycott them.

Why do we use boycotts? Well I hope if Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, or Mohandas Gandhi appeared alive today that they would advocate boycotts of the friends of those who oppose our legislation, in a climate where those who donate money to office holders exercise too much influence over legislation.

democratz, in order for the goal of Universal care to be achieved, we need powerful reform that changes the long-term trend of upward cost of both health care and drug costs.

Otherwise the cost trends will destroy the Public Plan within years, even after the initial one-time reduction in cost Single Payer for instance would create.

Let me illustrate. Set current health care costs for the whole nation to be 100, already causing trouble today at this high level. Going immediately to Single Payer would save a huge 17% or so on one hand, and add an initial, temporary spike in new patients and a little cost of catch-up maintenance care and a slight initial reduction in emergency care. All of these effects are one-time effects.

But...meanwhile the long-term trends in cost that are caused by other causes entirely would still be there for the reasons I've laid out in this blog in June here: